Poems XXI

 Chivalry

in my Youth

'twas always the Pining

for a taken Lady's kerchief

astride a charger,

Shining Armor,

worthy, chaste, pure.

But now it's I at court.

A Lord.

Role romantically unrecognizable

with a heart hemmed in by the necessity of station

unless it sees what's fun and free

In the girl

(woman)

on unbridled mare of Life.

Instead of tourneys I dedicate stability

Instead of glory it is quiet.

laughs & smiles are just for me

like all the others I could have had

if not for Chivalry

Poems XX

I apologize to the Fates,
to think that I didn't believe in soulmates,
and relationships great
and small were all worked or tall
tales and fables

and I was wrong.

Here you tell me to whisper sweet nothings, but I won't, because nothings are absences, and even though you are gone there is no void, I am full in my heart, and clear in my intention
to follow your Westward direction,
for new frontiers of sexual tension
pierced to clarity by a love

that is strong.

At home I sit, with a dog on the couch,
mouthing the words that one day will vouch
for a lifetime of love, from heaven above
to the simple mountains and groves,
to beached treasure troves,
to deserts where the only things thriving is us,
living,
Here in my heart,

where you belong.

Land Acknowledgement Statements

 Let’s say that you live in a house. It is a wonderful, spacious house with a large, green yard. This house was built on land that your grandmother stole from a man named Jack Turner. She straight up shot him, took his land, and built the house. Jack Turner’s grandson Greg also lives in your town. On account of the whole robbery and murder business, he is a lot poorer than you.

Do you:

A) Give the house and land back to Greg Turner because it was wrongfully taken.

B) Keep the house and land. The robbery was a long time ago, and the house and all of its renovations were done by your family.

C) Apologize and invite Greg to come move in with you for free room and board.

Or 

D) Make Greg take the day off from work to put up a map in front of your house showing that it used to belong to his grandfather, along with the words “We’re very sorry.” Every time you have someone over to your house, say “We acknowledge that we are on Jack Turner’s land” and pat yourself on the back for your inclusive practices and commitment to social justice. 

Probably not D, right?

From the Native Governance Center, at nativegov.org:

Land acknowledgment is only one small part of supporting Indigenous communities. We hope our land acknowledgment statement will inspire others to stand with us in solidarity with Native nations.

Solidarity can look like: 

— Donating time and money to Indigenous-led organizations.

— Amplifying the voices of Indigenous people leading grassroots change movements.

—  Returning land.

Teaching What You Preach

Listening to a podcast today I realized that Marshall McLuhan's famous "the medium is the message" is terribly valid for what I find deplorable in PowerPoint presentations.

You can talk about effective teaching methods all you want, unless you utilize those to teach teachers, your points are ineffective. Ms. Yagi showed her mechanisms in the sub course, and Mr. Fukuhara showed his affability and connection- and that course was worth as much as my Master's. So now all these teacher candidate are talking all about effective teaching and I, as their student, am never engaged. Jim's technology integration falls flat because I see lazy person who couldn't finish a thesis or keep working in the trenches either. So I don't care, and won't.

If the medium is the message, my presentations will have juggling and song. And planning will be authentically half-ass, with powerful, active execution.

I guess that’s my issue with educational apps as well- technology is a quick distractor, so no matter how “educational” the material is, it’s still emphasizing flashiness and speed over depth and quality of thought. The medium of a screen is simply too detrimental.

Stories / Al Sarrantonio & Neil Gaiman

Each story, reviewed in my "writer's perspective." Of course, since I listened on audiobook the narrators themselves are on trial here as well- sometimes they fit the story, other times they get it wrong in my opinion.

“Blood” by Roddy Doyle

Fantastically read, this a very short story with an interesting premise that stops just where it should- a bit open-ended, but not very, and satisfactory. I thought I was in for a whole tome of this. I was wrong.

“Fossil-Figures” by Joyce Carol Oates

I thought to myself, give it a chance. Just because you hated We Were the Mulvaneys doesn't mean you have to hate this. Nope. It meanders, its heavy-handed, and it has no payoff. At no point in time does it ever GO anywhere, even when it thinks it does. I hate Joyce Carol Oates officially.

“Wildfire in Manhattan” by Joanne Harris

Gods in the world of the humans- American Gods does it better. But it wasn't the story- it was the inconsistencies. Wildfire is the younger brother of hearth fire? The "our Thor/Arthur" pun was pitiful and instead of cheekily making it once it happened earnestly multiple times. And the bodiless villains were random and not fleshed out (THAT pun intended).

“The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains” by Neil Gaiman

He's a master storyteller. He wraps up all his threads and keeps even dark stories whimsical and fun.

“Unbelief” by Michael Marshall Smith

This is the perfect example of how to keep revealing information about who your character is. The perfect pace.

“The Stars are Falling” by Joe R. Lansdale

Kind of weird. Super into it at points, other times not so much. I thought when he got killed AGAIN at the end, there'd be him coming back, but... no answers. Good characterization but I need more rhyme and reason to my resurrections.

“Juvenal Nyx” by Walter Mosley

A juvenile name, but this was the time the narrator did his best reading. I wish it had tied in more from the beginning about the racial issues- they seemed to just be dropped by the wayside, even for a vampire story that's usually about the unwanted and downtrodden. Longer than it needed to be, and then shorter than it should have been. Could use some editing. Can't all vampire stories?

“The Knife” by Richard Adams

I didn't remember this one. I really had to try. It wasn't bad. But it was very short and kind of unsettling. It didn't make me care, let's just say that. An unremarkable plot with minimal characterization.

“Weights and Measures” by Jodi Picoult

I fucking bawled. I cried in the airplane. So sad. Wow.

“Goblin Lake” by Michael Swanwick

It's like he started writing a story, then decided to morph it into a meta-treatise on writing and storytelling, but never edited the beginning to make the promise to me, the reader, that he was going to go meta. So Miklas would love it but I very much did not.

“Mallon the Guru” by Peter Straub

"I'm gonna write a story! That was fun!" Yeah, fun, but utterly pointless. Nothing to say about humanity or society or religion or writing, or...

“Catch and Release” by Lawrence Block

Creepy. Could have been shorter, but the length made it more visceral for the type of story that it was. Meant to unsettle, it did. I can't say I want to read more of the writer, but he did what he set out to do very well.

“Polka Dots and Moonbeams” by Jeffrey Ford

I dug it. Very "San Junipero" from Black Mirror. Maybe they were inspired by it. Very lighthearted and fun, which I could appreciate. Too many of these stories are serious. Like the last one.

“Loser” by Chuck Palahniuk

Funny, but inaccurate. I was in a fraternity. We would have loved that guy. Didn't seem to fit this collection though.

“Samantha’s Diary” by Diana Wynne Jones

Listening to this one really messed up the ending of it. I had to listen to it four times to understand. In print, I could have figured it out, but the didn't use a man's voice for the man's voice, they just read out "a man's voice comes on" even though up until that point they had been reading it like an audio diary. Irksome.

“Land of the Lost” by Steward O’Nan

An interesting read- I see other people online hating on it, but I really liked it. I've never read anything like it before. But I found it accurate.

“Leif in the Wind” by Gene Wolfe

Fun science fiction. Unsympathetic characters. Yet I give it a thumbs up.

“Unwell” by Carolyn Parkhurst

What a bitch! I really liked this story. I sped up the narration to 1.25x to really capture the franticness of such a terrible woman, and I do believe it helped.

“A Life in Fictions” by Kat Howard

I think it got too self-important about the bleeding of identities, and I really don't think it would have been that hard for her- or this story could have been the last written story.

“Let the Past Begin” by Jonathan Carroll

Booooooo. It tries to leave you with chills, but it's stupid. It's concept is stupid, the characters are stupid, it could have gone in such a better direction- with "being just like his father" meaning the child will also have an absent father- but that's not where the writer goes with it. He tries to lead to mystery and magic and wonder but it just feels hokey. And again, my big complaint, there's no payoff.

“The Therapist” by Jeffrey Deaver

It really changed modes, a bit abruptly, so for a portion of the story I didn't care, but then it came back around (back again to the advice of keep the promises you make to the reader). I get wanting to put in a twist, but in a short story I don't think twists are all that great, I think. In the end though it won me over, even if "nemes" are a bit cheesy.

“Parallel Lines” by Tim Powers

Another forgettable one. I had to look it up even though it was recent. Basically part of the plot of the Steve Martin/Lily Tomlin movie I really like, but instead about old ladies with no redeeming characteristics. Blah.

“The Cult of the Nose” by Al Sarrantonio

Like the Therapist, but worse. The payoff wasn't there. Instead of leaving a question about a man's sanity, or the truth, he's clearly just crazy. And that's a big disappointing copout. We never even learn "the cult"'s secrets, even though that's what it tries to build too. Not even a lie.

“Human Intelligence” by Kurt Anderson

Now this one's Santa Claus reveal was unnecessary and foreshadowed poorly. And the story didn't need it! The story was great, uplifting, and full of hope. So he could have cut out the winking at the reader and just gone with the fun thinking science fiction.

“Stories” by Michael Moorcock

Strange. I don't know... Didn't really fit with the rest of the collection. A memoir, kind of. I'm glad I didn't live in the 60s. 

“The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon” by Elizabeth Hand

Great characterization. The longest story, but it didn't drag like some of the others which weren't nearly its length. Mostly interesting, but definitely not classifiable in any "genre." Very realistic, even with its strange and eerie instances. I liked it, and I'll keep thinking about it, I'm sure.

“The Devil on the Staircase” by Joe Hill

In this case, the story would have been served better by a different narrator. Truly. A good yarn.

Andy Weir

You ever read that short story, "The Egg?" It's a pretty popular short story on the internet. Guy dies, finds out that he's living every life, and his little universe is just an egg? It seems to have been written solely for the passage:

“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.

“And you’re the millions he killed.”

“I’m Jesus?”

“And you’re everyone who followed him.”

And I mean, okay, I get it. Really, I do. Give everyone some perspective, man.

But you know what that also could have read?

"I'm Hitler?" You said, appalled.

"And you're the millions he killed."

"But I was still me?"

"Yes, and your wife."

"That I had sex with."

"Yes, you've been everyone you've ever had sex with. And you've been your father, so also you had sex with your mother, technically. Lots of sex. All of it."

Try taking that story as a profound meditation on the truth of being good to one another now. Can't, can ya? I ruined it.

And I'm okay with that. It's neat, but always sounded a bit pretentious. But now I feel bad.

Because Andy Weir wrote "The Martian!" That was a good book! Hilarious and crude, not serious and preachy. And in my opinion it had just as much philosophy. Have a sense of humor about the possibility of your own death, and always keep moving, to win.

Poems XIX

Did you know I'm dating my future wife? Cuz that's cool.

My Ocean

If I were the ocean and you were a boat,
It wouldn't matter if you went when I stayed put.

The ocean envelops the land, like ceaseless kisses the waves smack,
And my love encircles all of you and I'll never want it back.
It would be dishonest for me to say that I knew that this would happen,
That somewhere deep within my heart there'd be a bubbling to rival the Kraken.

I sound the trumpets every day as I await your return
My passion aches, I languish, curse, and still it only burns
Brighter, darker in its hues, I wish to torch the hurdles
No circumstantial Scyllan fates could ever claim to be hurtful
For I am stronger, safe in you, secure and wrathful, righteous,
I win the day, I seize the prize, I have what I need- us.

Call me El Niño, my temperatures rise when I see you,
But I'm no boy, in you a man, with loving eyes of blue,
You can sail the years away, at home's the ocean true.

Poems XVIII

Ancient Plants

There's a little beam of sunlight in the conservatory,
It speckles and glimmers in turn,
Illuminates that ennobled, ancient leaf,
Once megaflora, now known as the fern.

They've moved this fern to the New World and to Oz,
They've transplanted this plant to Japan,
But her chlorophyll grows greenest, replenished, and strong,
When her roots sink in to her homeland.

The fern has a noble (pre)history,
Grandiose and loved in the era of dinos,
But now she sits in a sterile glass room,
And her dreams intertwine with her woes.

But low scents still draw the butterflies,
Landing as happy strangers and not out of pity,
Fear not for the fate of the fair-fringed frond,
The same sun shines in conservatory, country, or city.

When I was a child in Larkspur's canyon,
The ferns would pop vibrantly after the rain.
Cold tears from the sky rolled off verdant faces,
The sacrosanct beauty seen only in pain.

There's a little beam of sunlight in the conservatory.
Warm, warm, warm-
The fern.

Poems XVII

Arctic Sun:

You put yourself low in the sky, and yet You
Warm all the small things, and warm me too.

You have no need to scatter shadows
Or make the snowdrifts melt,
Your beauty brings out their latent hues,
In brightened souls Your work is felt.

Without the Sun there is no lichen,
No lichen, no caribou,
The wolf needs meat and I need meat,
the cycle worships You.

The darkest days, when You're not here,
Feel as if they last all year,
But long winters lead to longest summers,
Bathed in light when you are near.

Fuck Thoreau- A Guest Author, This Time

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/pond-scum

"The hypocrisy is not that Thoreau aspired to solitude and self-sufficiency but kept going home for cookies and company. That's just the gap between aspiration and execution, plus the variability in our needs and moods from one moment to the next- eminently human experiences, which, had Thoreau engaged with them, would have made for a far more interesting and useful book. The hypocrisy is that Thoreau lived a complicated life but pretended to live a simple one. Worse, he preached at others to live as he did not, while berating them for their own compromises and complexities."

I love that Kathryn Schulz called the piece "Pond Scum."

Pizza and a Seal

"What I really learned from being a Navy SEAL," he said, "was to be humble, and confidence."

Uh-huh, I thought. Which is why you just showed me a video of you jumping out of airplane. Why you prefaced the comment on your humility with "I didn't just learn to kill people, or to make kill shots with sniper rifles from miles away." You said and did these things because you're obviously humble. You're so incredibly confident that the only reason we're having this conversation is because you wanted to act macho when I started talking to your girlfriend.

I could have said those things out loud. When you pretend to be a Navy SEAL, though, you might just fight a man ten years younger than you for daring to illuminate the truth. And though reality is on my side, an impervious head and fighting reflexes are not. So I kept my mouth shut and instead tried a different tactic: Sycophancy.

"Dope. I'm gonna go eat that pizza."

Ah, the pizza. The reason I went over to his girlfriend and her friend in the first place. That Domino's crust had wafted into my nostrils from across the bar, and I had nothing to lose. I waltzed over there and my wish was granted: a steamy slice. Veggie, but whatever. I paid nothing. I almost thought I might pay with my face- a Navy SEAL boyfriend? This could get ugly.

Not with this guy. I doubted his credentials when he was my height but not noticeably athletic in any way. He came in so hot to talk to me when he noticed me saddle up to the ladies. I noticed that and immediately played friendly, over-the-top in my obsequiousness, and smoothed over the situation. When you're smart, play oblivious. Strangers don't know you're not really dumb. Simpletons gain leeway.

That leeway worked its way into more pizza. I called Jason over to Gary and me, when the women were gone, and said we each wanted another slice. Well, Gary had never had one to begin with and I don't think he truly wanted one, but I wanted two. Channa called Gary up to sing. Leaving me to be asked by Navy Sea Lion, "Who's Gary?"

"Uh, that's Gary."

"Yeah, but who's Gary?"

"He's that guy? Who you just met, Gary?"

"I mean, I've killed people." Ok, sure dude, really relevant to the conversation. "Who is Gary? What's he do, where's he from?"

"Well, he crushes it at karaoke." That's as far as I got. Mr. SEAL got fed up with my inability to put two and two together, I guess, and just let me have the whole box of pizza. Straight up.

Then he showed me the video of him jumping out of a plane, real Smoking Gun evidence of his war record, and we wind up at the beginning of the story. A small, aggressive man. And a smaller, more aggressive but only in the pursuit of pizza, me. What a strange night.

"The separation of the races is not a disease of the colored people, but a disease of the white people." -Albert Einstein

Poems XVI

Many a girl there were, there; But none of them were you.
I can sing "She's A Lady." I can sing "Delilah." And only in that order- 
Because of you.

I had no attached notions of grandeur
To see where we were going,
Whether bold, guarded, wickedly demure,
What was best in you was the unknowing.
Eila,
Though I said it wrong or spelled it poor,
Thy name held so much hope.
Either Fate could've been knocking at the door,
Blissful garden, or knotted rope.

And I didn't know! But
It's what I wanted to see,
But in the end you nixed us,
No love, no heartbreak, no
Sordid passions- for, soon,
The ocean shall be betwixt us.

Poems XV: Sonnets

WORD SONNET

Paradise

is

sitting

abeyant

in

a

new

friend’s

tent-

the

slapping

rain

plunging

down.

ITALIAN SONNET

I approach, rudderless, the darkened moor,

Where the crooked lighthouse normally sits,

Be there it may, but completely- unlit!

Yet I must set my course on her shore.

The coward caretaker trembled at the door,

The storm hammered in hellish, ghastly fits.

The mad tempest ran away with his wits,

His initiative drowned at the floor.

But hot winds have pushed the thunders away,

Brought new clouds that surrender to the moon,

Beautiful mistress! She dapples the bay-

Renders my damp night a glorious day-

Some cloud puffs are friends, some winds are a boon,

And fools full of fear should never hold sway.

SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET

I scoffed as I heard of love at first sight

Thinking it’d never happen to me-

I tried to reason with all of my might

Love with calculation, not fallacy.

But logic be damned, it’s every time,

Exponentially harder and faster.

It is reason I shun instead of rhyme,

My pupils dilated in disaster.

That’s what my brain claims, but maybe he’s wrong,

For although eyes see superficially,

The nose sniffs out hormones subtly strong,

Chemical love coming naturally.

I’ll let this infatuate garden grow!

Plant yellow Dutch tulips as Cyrano!

COURTLY LOVE

I.

I have a Platonic love, of a different sort-

My Pallas Aphrodite, Goddess full of wisdom and beauty both,

She is the ideal

The rest of us poor reflections

The only Form to Grace our Earth with unveiled presence

A shapeliness no circle can equal

Perilous to my sanity to behold the face of my abstract Everything

To marvel, quake in awe,

Wail and quiver at not having

Plato’s Athenian,

Come to us mortals in Troth.

No man can harness the sun or even stare too long ‘fore going blind

Blind as love

Part of perfection sits in me and raises me up,

Eudaemonic,

For even daring to dream of loving Forms of You.

II.

He who is not jealous can not love.

I am not jealous.

I am envious.

For I do not have.

I covet but do not covet love, which I hold in brightened, dark secret.

My passions invisible and obvious,

My Guinevere!

I am tired, tired of being ashamed,

For who I am is a lover.

A deep devoted fool,

Knight of motley and bells

That jingle for you, no errancy,

And herald a maddened gladdening heart.

I am more me because I don’t have you.

Poems XIV

"Page 113, January 2015"

A myelined-up Milky Way
Tendrils of dendrites lead galaxies away.
The dark matter of thoughts
Though they may be light, free or neuronic,

He thought to himself-
"We're just the electrons of a giant's brain."
A fifth-dimensional beast
As we have threes and twos and ones in our heads
The cycle ends sometime
Just as it began with a bang
It ends with a 5D suicide.
A self-inflicted gunshot
Because sheheit asked "what does it all mean?"
And didn't understand
That the universe'll never answer
Because in itself already had.

The search for meaning
       beautifully Incoherent as it struggles
               versus Inherency
                         Truth: subjective
                                  Also: meaning
        "But that's an objective fact."
His fists too heavy to lift
(His hands were made of ham):
High as all that loftiness,
A ha-ha heart beating a rhythm that seems unique
Until it searches the scope of infinity to find
Liberation in a speck and a number.

A Spoonful of Sugar

Makes not just medicine go down, but raw eggs as well. I have discovered that with a sprinkling of sugar on the top, I can down a raw egg in one gulp with no nose plugging, and no retching, and no bad aftertaste. The trick is to go one at a time, with a new shake of sugar each time. It's surprisingly easy and I'm very happy. Thank you Miss Poppins.

Accuracy

I've said this before, verbally to real people, but I'm going to set it in stone. Meaning the internet which could explode at any moment because who caches a random blog.

The glass is half-full if you have been filling the glass and stopped.
The glass is half-empty if you have been drinking the glass and stopped.

You might counter by saying that I have stumbled into a room with a glass at 50% capacity and have no way of knowing how it got to its current state.

However, to reach this state of 50% capacity the glass would have either had to be previously filled or emptied. The objective truth of how the glass reached this point exists regardless of my having witnessed it. There is an objective truth, it is just impossible for me to know.

No matter whether I was there or not, a thing happened. The universe started somehow. Will I ever know? No, because I wasn't there. But I can see its aftermath, i.e. me and everything around me, and know that some thing did occur at one point.

Poems XIII

"And A Sermon"

Do you remember when we used to do this?
I get a two-day hangover now
It's day one.
We'd drink our bellyful
Until the sun
Came up and we'd go to bed 'til noon and do it all again.
The moon was our friend,
Work the enemy.
It didn't matter the day,
We had class, sure,
and some wimmin did and some didn't
The same sisters wore their Lululemon
To 9 o' clock Wednesday Spanish
and 7 am Friday slinkings back home.
I loved those girls.
Not in the sentimental way,
But what they stood for,
Youth and ribaldry.
Revelry at the Dionysian Catalina wine mixer,
While in the pursuit of an education- they'll amount to more than us,
The ones who had to worry
About cleanup and setup
and the moral cleanup of taking back
Everything said the night before.
I don't know what they see in us.
But they're beautiful, every one.
Sluts is a bad word they say,
and it has dreadful connotations
But should not everyone
Be allowed the freedom to choose love with a side of lust?
It's the judgment inherent in the word, but it reflects on the moral police
I see jealousy and a lack of understanding.
We set a standard
We don't really know who should follow it.
So we lob darts at the board of "whores"
and know obscenity when we see it.
But I see beauty and hair flowing in the wind, the way it should be.
That's just me
A sentimental young fool,
Full of hope for the new, the next, the "us" generation
Let the girls play, they're women, not girls,
We're boys and men, not patriarchs,
I see walks of the unashamed,
Though the headaches can hang our heads.
We all have a desire to own,
To lock up our booty, or claim it from someone else,
Someone who has left it to fallow on an island
Men and women alike want the security
So they fight against gaiety.
A treasure can never be yours.
It's metal and gemstone and has no feelings.
A person can be yours
But some will never be.
Those are the grails you drink from-
I'd rather have a carpenter's cup
Than a gaudy, flashy one.
Tramps exist, so do cads, and the blurred lines inhabited between
But it is him without stones that casts the first one
While the happy stay grounded in dreams.

Poems XII

"At North Lake, Where I Did Not Mean To Go"

I took the path less traveled by,
The air cold and crisp and light,
The fall sun casting shadows,
The rocks and trees in darkened sight.

To look left at the leafless aspens,
With their amber cousin down the hill,
You could think they would squabble for life,
But they are one as the lakewater still.

A fish hops, brings a single ripple,
A southern breeze on calm North Lake.
But the aspen's stalks stand tall and clustered,
No telltale shiverous shake.

The fishermen across the water
Can be heard, what do they say?
They see me as I am quiet, on this
Lovely autumn day.


"Down In Sunset"

A pale silhouette of the burnished sky
The reflection shines brighter in its gray
My sight
Flies through the aspen ghosts
To watch a shimmer of refraction fade.
Fleeting, and gloriously so,
The ashen flow
Peeks through to me.
The mountains have their flipped counterparts,
But it is
Sky Father
seen in himself upon
Earth Mother
who stops my descent.

The sun dies
And my subject is cold and pale,
A silver farewell.


"Knives In My Room"

Three knives
On the wall
Coming in at Angle
Down & In
Down and out
A triad, trifecta, triangle,
The glided red, a royal's blade
A peasant's of hide and leather.
Nondescript and ceremonial,
The third tilted on its tether.
Knives for grandfather,
Knives for me,
Brothers of blood and those across borders
"Uzbekiston"
The cougar says
In fantasy scripts out of Mordor.

"Untitled"

I went to see the fall colors at Lake Sabrina
A friend
I don't know very well
Told me it was beautiful.

Why is it that someone always gets there first?
I was too late
Too old
To see the red-topped sprouts
The way my heart felt it should.
I went the wrong way more than once
Dead ends so full of hope
I thanked myself that I told no one
Brought no friends for my journey
But wouldn't it be wonderful

To share the sorrow,
For them to know my mind?

Rust still stood, here and there,
But I dismissed it as not my Muse,
Rocky islands, so many stones
Needing water
Needing snow, not shallows.

I see the waterline.
What could be.
The folly and fall of any romantic.

Possibilities linger and tempt.
So I'll try again.
I'll climb the mountains.
Find a new lake.
One higher up.
One that was there the whole time.

A few weeks, or months,
Time flies even when you want it to, when you wait for it.
Who is next?
I welcome winter
The harbor's closed.

An auburn gully tantalizes,
Moving on to what I cannot grasp.

But O!

The azure!

A different vantage,
Of a higher and nobler sort.

Breathtaking views from
Hard-breathing heights,
A powder sky,
Verdant shallows where I see
No fish but know he is there.
The lake, she opens a cerulean depth over there
Over. There.
There!
The word that's been missing.
What is, not what could be,
The is, the there
Bringing presence to the present moment
For this present soul.
Why harp on the nonce?
I see a second me belong
To the lady of the lake, so clear.

Poems XI

"On Horseshoe Lake"

A slight breeze brings the scent of the trees,
The bushes in sight
But no flowers, though
I scent happiness bright,
The smell of the act of living.
I calm my heart, and
Sunbursts bubble up from the deep.
I paddle in a ring,
Ringed by canine friendliness.
Sticks drift past me, theirs once, as
The cares of the world.

Green and brown and blue and
Hues all in between,
the murkiness and sun and shade collide.
No exultant joy, no excitement of ecstasy but-
Sweet, sweet melancholy turning to happiness as
The season turns too,
To what's right and should be.
No sadness there for me.

I paddle back and forth and have no purpose and
Stress washes and melts in the sun's warm beams.
It's serene, beauteous, peaceful and quiet, and
Solitary! But
I finally don't feel lonely.
Just calm even though the wind stirs the waves.
The chilly lake has no measure of "too much-"
Refreshment only,
The wind dies for me, the only one.
Just by myself, with a quieted mind.
He's not bringing the world with him. Just
Accepting it, the wondrous things,
The impartial sun, the lovely sun.
I am acquitted of dreariness and business both.

So I paddle, sweet serenity my guide.